First-time users will need to load the Adobe Acrobat Reader on their computers to read the articles in the APL Technical Digest. If you need assistance, see your Systems Administrator.

We have added two new features to this online issue of the APL Technical Digest - hyperlinked e-mail addresses and thumbnail sketches.

You can now correspond directly with article authors. Click on an author's e-mail address, complete the dialog box, and send.

Thumbnail sketches of each page are shown on the left side of articles when you select "View/Thumbnails and Page" from the Acrobat Reader menu bar or click on the thumbnails icon (third or fourth icon from the left). Use the thumbnails to navigate to any part of the article. For example, if an illustration is shown on the upper left of a thumbnail, click on that area of the icon to link directly to the illustration.

Miscellanea

THE COVER: The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) mission was developed for NASA by APL. It is the first mission of NASA's Discovery Program, which emphasizes "faster, better, cheaper" planetary scientific missions. The cover shows the spacecraft's 3-year trajectory to asteroid 433 Eros, photographs taken during the flyby of asteroid 253 Mathilde on 27 June 1997, and an artist's rendering of the spacecraft. (Cover illustration by Kenneth R. Moscati.)